White Balance

  White Balance

  Ainslie Paton

  His world was grey. She gave him back his colour.

  This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events are the product of the author’s vivid imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, places, organisations or people, living or dead is purely co-incidental and beyond the intent of the author and publisher.

  Copyright © 2012

  Chapter Index

  1: Hurt

  2: Boned

  3: Schmuck

  4: The Bastard Penguin

  5: Dealing with Despots

  6: If Hugh & Scarlett are Busy

  7: Reputation Damage

  8: Application for Atrophy

  9: Being Blake

  10: Romance

  11: Expelled

  12: Get Over Yourself

  13: Sour Worms

  14: Bag of Wind

  15: Recognition

  16: Evil Twin

  17: Illegal Drug

  18: Falling Down

  19: Flutter and Ice

  20: Selling the Family Car

  21: Shady Move

  22: Ruthless

  23: Entranced

  24: Floss

  25: Hot Weather

  26: Splatter

  27: Heavy

  28: Light

  29: Dark

  30: Warm

  31: Inappropriate

  32: Monkey in a Tutu

  33: Swagger

  34: Blowout

  35: Despicable

  36: Code Word for Everything

  37: Equal

  38: Hiccup

  39: Lonely Boy

  40: Symmetry

  41: Acceptance

  42: Concussion

  43: Ladder

  44: Partners

  45: Bruising

  46: Alternate Ending

  1: Hurt

  Eighteen months ago:

  The wet salt smell of the sea was sharp, a shock to the head like a blast of nasal spray. The sky was pink, only just awake. There was a ragged fringe of weed on the shore that didn’t hide the lethal veins of bluebottle tails.

  She used a telephoto lens to get nitpick close to the figure against the rock wall. She had to be quick. Chris was double-parked, the engine idling. He was anxious about getting to the hospital on time and annoyed she’d wanted to do this, of all mornings. She was uneasy too, but this was a normality she wouldn’t have for a while, and it seemed a small thing to want it now.

  Frame. The man sat very still. He looked to be asleep. Head dropped forward. Not a vagrant. Not a homeless person. He was dressed too well, dark jeans and boots, a light jacket. Maybe he’d had a hard night. Maybe he was doing what she did in another way—being with the morning. Though she’d not seen him here before, and the beach had its regular cast of characters, especially at this time of the day. He was out of place. Wrong clothes. No towel. No look of readiness for an early swim, or satisfaction from having already had one.

  Zoom. She invaded his privacy further.

  When he moved suddenly, lifting his face, looking right at her, she fumbled the camera almost dropping it. He unfolded; stretched his long legs out in front of him, braced his back against the seawall near the surf club. He had broad shoulders rolled slightly forward — comfortable or was it defeated. He was young. A man in his prime.

  Zoom.

  His head kicked back, chin lifted, face tilted to the sun. He had straight black hair, well cut with a lick that fell forward over his forehead. And the look on his face — not rested, not relaxed, not with the morning. What she saw in him was loss and despair. She didn’t know why she thought that. The set of his jaw, the fix of his lips and the line of his chest — there was something about him that suggested anguish.

  Her eyes could touch every part of him though they were separated by a walkway, and a wide strip of beach, but she couldn’t shake the idea he was forsaken. If he could see her at all, she’d be a huddled shape on the promenade. A voyeur intent on pilfering his image. He was handsome.

  Zoom.

  His hands were clasped together lying in his lap. He had long, clever fingers with neat nails.

  Focus.

  Wedding ring. He was somebody’s husband.

  Click.

  She lowered the camera and hobbled back towards the car. The pain was bad this morning. The drugs no longer helped much. She’d grown immune to their floating state, their numbing ease.

  “Are you done?” Chris was trying hard not to sound impatient, but it bled though in the clipped words.

  She curled up on the backseat, the throbbing too bad to allow her to sit properly; to rest her weight on her tailbone. “Let’s go.”

  He drove carefully, like he always did.

  In the end she didn’t post the picture of the man. It felt far too intimate, too much like she’d stolen his soul in a moment he’d bared it. She could’ve done something with his hands, but even that felt like an assault on him.

  That and Chris confiscated her camera.

  Eventually his image went into a backup file along with a bunch of others that hadn’t suited her mood, or were too boring or similar to photos already used. She rarely looked at those images, but they were too much a part of her to bin completely.

  She remembered the man for two reasons. The date and the way he made her feel. She’d found him the morning of the surgery, as though he’d been put there for her when she’d needed to be reminded that pain takes many forms. He made her feel protective. She’d wanted to go to him, ask where he hurt, soak up the stress in his voice and hold his hand to help him get past it.

  When she met him, she had exactly the same reaction.

  2: Boned

  Now:

  He can’t be serious? But if he was, she was so screwed.

  He was red faced and squint eyed, learning forward aggressively, hands jabbing and mouth spraying hot, slick spittle in her face. He was either outraged sincerity or jitterbugging towards a meltdown.

  Bailey began to think it was the former, though Christ it was hard to believe he was serious. Sure, she was the one in charge but that didn’t extend to out of the box issues like this.

  Did it?

  Meltdown man seemed to think so because he wasn’t letting up, the spittle, the jabbing, the squinting, and a bright red face that looked like it might manifest real live steam from his ears.

  People were gawking, making a wide berth around them, as they streamed out of the grand ballroom, but rubbernecking like they might at a fender-bender. Brian’s assistant, Tom was fluttering anxiously. He was split between involuntary spittle catching and making himself scarce. He hovered somewhere closer to ‘I’ll pretend I don’t know these people’.

  Given it was suicide mission crazy to get between Brian and his outrage, Bailey contented herself with wiping her hand over her face and waiting it out. If Brian kept this up, he’d be straightjacket material. If he kept it up, he might keel over from excess indignation, and then she’d never get her invoice paid. But at least it would give the gawkers something to really drop-jaw at.

  If what Brian was saying was serious, that’s all that was left. Getting paid for what she’d done so far, because otherwise it was all over. No national tour, no regional satellite events, no monthly webcasts, no high profile bump to her resume, no next six months of income.

  She’d just been boned, dumped, canned, wasted, sacked. All because the hotel had a power failure in the middle of the launch event she was responsible for. All because the Energy and Environment Minister was left stumbling around and swearing on stage in the pitch dark, without his sound, vision or autocue, and accompanied by the rough shouts of laughter from the journalists in the front row.
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  So much for showcasing the new national blueprint for energy reform. A blackout was pretty much the only illustration of the Minister’s plan no one wanted to see, least of all the Minister. And ho, ho, ho, pun intended—no one did see it.

  She was shafted because the five-star hotel had a seven minute power outage in the middle of the announcement of the new national energy plan. And because she was supposed to have known that a power failure might blackout the hotel, and the whole city block precisely after the Minister said the words, “This strategy ensures we’ll have the right resources to power the nation’s future.”

  She’d even written those words and instead of queuing videotape of rooftop solar panels, wind farms and clean energy initiatives, they’d be headline material in the morning’s press for all the wrong reasons. She could see it now.

  National Energy Plan Lacks Power.

  Nation’s Power Future Black.

  Clean Power Plan Goes Dark.

  At least the TV cameras didn’t get much footage. They hadn’t expected to need their own lighting, but they’d still manage to get something on air tonight, if it was only Brian doing his best impression of man requiring a straightjacket.

  And there was no question that this might blow over, that it was a heat of the moment thing, a wild stab at having someone to blame. There was a ‘heads will roll’ inevitability to the whole thing. Of course the only head that would detach easily and with the least gore to clean up was hers.

  Brian and Tom were safe. They were Ministerial Advisors and no one in the Minster’s media unit could be held responsible, so Bailey had scapegoat, dupe and schmuck written all over her aching body because the rules of ritual sacrifice in a situation like this dictated that the most expendable person was always the hired consultant.

  When Brian finally ran out of drool to fling around the foyer, he gave Bailey a death stare that curled the toes of her right foot and stalked off. The further down the corridor he went, the taller he became, as any responsibility for the debacle sloughed off his slanting shoulders. His parting comment, “You’ll never work for a Federal Ministry again,” was said so loudly it might have been meant for the whole government back in Canberra to hear.

  “Bailey, I’m really sorry,” said Tom. He was scared rabbit cautious, nostrils all a twitch, not coming too close. “Brian will calm down. But there’s no way you can continue on this project now.”

  “I didn’t pull the plug, Tom. I couldn’t have known the power would fail. And if I’d suggested putting backup generators in a five-star hotel, you guys would have laughed me out of my socks.”

  Tom shrugged. “I know, but someone has to take responsibility.”

  “How about the electricity provider?”

  “I’m sorry Bailey, I really am. Until it all went dark, this was the best launch event we’ve ever held. You were an inspiring producer.”

  “Past tense, were. Present tense—I’m unemployed.”

  Tom did a neck shrinking movement that took him from hare to tortoise and said everything there was to say. Bailey watched him scurry away taking a good percentage of her financial security and professional reputation with him.

  This was criminally unfair. This was feet stomping frustrating, teeth grinding unreasonable. This would make you punch plaster, kick kittens, lie on the ground and howl with the injustice of it. But Bailey was too tired for any of that, except the laying down part.

  She was screwed.

  This job would’ve provided six months of steady work. She had no more jobs on the books until halfway through the year. Filling the gap wouldn’t be easy. She’d turned down several other assignments to take on the Ministry’s work, so she really needed to hustle to close the whopping gap that’d now opened up between gigs, because her mortgage didn’t take unpaid holidays and neither did her car loan.

  Maybe there was a bright side. Doug would think so. He’d been on at her about going back to work too soon, working too hard and not taking enough time to recover properly. Yeah, Doug would be downright pleased about this. Until he worked out he was one of the luxuries that might have to get scaled back.

  So, the bright side? It wasn’t shining from regular income, job satisfaction or career highlights. And the only thing radiating heat was the pins and needles running all the way in her left leg. That pain was so electric she might’ve been able to light the stage during the blackout if only she’d have thought of it.

  Ok, so the bright side? There had to be a bright side.

  When she went back into the ballroom to pack up the control desk she knew she was limping. Unable to stride freely, and with no feeling in her left foot, her gait took on a rocking motion, just slightly—no one else but Doug would pick it, but the bastard penguin was back.

  The hours had been long on the energy project, and she’d spent too much time stuck in a chair at her keyboard working on schedules and staging plans, scripts and visual materials. Now all that was showing up with a waddle that made her feel short, fat and unattractive to go with unemployed.

  If there was a bright side, it would be having time away from the desk and killing off the penguin. It would mean time to experiment with her new camera and there’d be other shining things. There always were and in any case, it was summer and if you had to be out of work, it might as well be in summer, in Sydney.

  3: Schmuck

  He’d overslept. Again.

  The rumble of the garbage truck woke him with a brilliant realisation. The bin was still sitting full-bellied in its alcove in the front garden instead of at the gutter where it was meant to be right now, for the second, maybe even the third week in a row. Of course it was.

  It was all he could do to peel his eyelids open, sticky with the crust of conjunctivitis and stare at the clock. 11am. Too late to call this lunch meeting off. He’d meant to be up at some ordinary business-like hour and on the phone to whatever her name was at the big brother scheme to cancel this appointment.

  You’d think that wouldn’t be too hard. Wake, get up, wash your face, make a phone call. Maybe get dressed and squeeze breakfast into that backbreaking schedule. But no, he couldn’t keep his eyes open. And to think, not so many months ago, he’d had insomnia so bad he could hardly keep them closed, spending half of every night wandering the streets zombie dull and vampire alert at the same time.

  He pushed himself into a sitting position, not trusting he wouldn’t go back to sleep again. ‘Cause after all, ten hours sleep isn’t anywhere near enough.

  He was in no position to be anyone’s big brother. He was a man who could no longer reliably get out of bed, stock a fridge or find a phone number. How long was it since he’d changed these sheets? How long since he’d seen Chauncey?

  He looked around the light starved bedroom. It was a back to the future study in adolescent boy, clothes draped on every available surface, including the floor. Shoes where they’d been kicked off, and a stack of cups and glasses competing for space with a pile of books on both bedside tables.

  If the plan had been to eradicate any sense of Shannon ever having been in the room, you’d call it mission accomplished.

  That was the de facto plan for the rest of the house as well, and wasn’t it coming along nicely. The mould in the bathroom had potential to sprout mushrooms, which would be handy, because there was something pulsing and slimy in the vegetable crisper, and you wouldn’t want to put anything in there you considered to be food.

  The vacuum cleaner had been standing in the lounge room for at least six weeks. It’d felt like a good idea a month ago to give the floors a once over, but that’d proven too difficult, what with all the sleeping that was needed. It was also too hard to move it so it didn’t obscure the TV, so for the last few weeks anything he’d bothered to watch on the box had the vacuum’s stick handle running through the middle of it.

  It added more humour to the news story about the National Energy Blueprint that went black. Not that the story needed any more humour, it was already slapstick
enough.

  There was only one room that survived the tornado of domestic doom and that’s only because it was still too impossible to go in there. The ladder was in there, so that meant the light in the hall had been out for eighteen months. And there was no way to change it without the ladder and well, the ladder was staying where it was, with the now dried up wallpaper paste and the plastic sheeting and Shannon’s iPod, and God knows what else got left in there.

  Chauncey had probably found somewhere else to live. Smart. That’s what he should’ve done too. Found somewhere else where he could start again fresh. He could do it still. Lock this place up. Leave it exactly as it was until it got taken over by the cockroaches that’d set up a neighbourhood command post in the pile of pizza boxes in the kitchen and the weeds that were now hip height and self-important in the back yard.

  Maybe that was a new plan. Just leave it all.

  He hauled himself out of bed, snagged a still wet towel from the doorknob and stumbled down the hallway of the once showpiece Federation home to the shower.

  Eighteen months to change a light bulb. Eighteen months to find that woman’s name and tell her without Shannon this positively, definitely wasn’t on. Without Shannon he was as good as dangerous to a kid’s well being. Not that he hadn’t already tried to tell the woman that on numerous occasions. She’d asked him to wait, told him how hard it was to get volunteers, and then she’d dodged his calls. So he’d let it ride, like the light bulb and the washing up and the mould and the inability to find a coat hanger. Like making any decisions in his private life that didn’t involve picking up dry cleaning or phoning somewhere for food to be delivered or...

  No, there was no or. That was it. He made no decisions about his private life. He’d stopped having one. There was the universe of work where he functioned normally and there was sleep, which he couldn’t get enough of, and there was the need to eat, which he didn’t always remember, but that was it. The sum total of his existence. It was all very simple really.